Page 137 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 2

The realization hit me like ice water in my veins, and I lost my fucking mind.

I screamed.

I screamed until my throat was raw, until my voice cracked and broke, until I tasted copper on my tongue. I pounded my fists against the walls, against the ceiling, against every surface I could reach. My knuckles split open. Blood slicked my hands. I didn’t care.

I had to get out.

I had to get OUT.

“AMAI!” I screamed his name like a curse, like a prayer. “AMAI, YOU FUCKING COWARD! LET ME OUT!”

Nothing.

No response. No sound except my own ragged breathing and the thunder of my heartbeat in my ears.

I kicked at the walls. Threw my shoulder against them. Clawed at the concrete until my fingernails bent back and broke.

Nothing moved.

Nothing gave.

I was trapped.

The panic morphed into something worse—something primal and suffocating. I struggled to pull in a full breath. My lungs refused to expand properly. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t fucking breathe.

I was going to die in here.

Alone. In the dark. Buried alive like some fucking horror movie.

I pressed my back against the wall and pulled my knees to my chest, trying to make myself smaller, trying to find space that didn’t exist. My breath came in short, sharp gasps. Hyperventilating. I knew I was hyperventilating but I couldn’t stop. My eyes darted around, looking for a sliver of light but there was none.

The darkness pressed in on me from all sides.

I was drowning in it.

Drowning.

The word triggered something deep in my brain—some old, buried terror that had nothing to do with this concrete tomb and everything to do with water closing over my head, my lungs burning, Amai’s hands holding me under?—

“Stop,” I whispered to myself. “Stop. Stop. Stop.”

I forced myself to breathe slower. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. In. Out. In. Out.

I could feel my hands going numb.

The panic didn’t disappear, but it receded enough for me to think.

Amai did this.

My brother put me in this hole.

The same brother who tried to drown me when we were kids because I took his toy. The same brother who’d spent our entire lives being Winston’s golden child while I was the fuckup, the disappointment, the one who always got whatever he wanted no matter the cost.

The same brother who stabbed me in front of Truth.

Truth.

Her name cut through the panic like a blade.